1. Chris Dillow explains why he's not getting off his fat arse to do what people died so that he could. Vote. Makes me sick.2. Paul Waugh on Dr John Reid's blow to Gordon Brown.
3. Danny Finkelstein on everything you never wanted to know about Alan Johnson.
4. Bob Piper on an uncomfortable moment for John Humphrys.
5. Nick Robinson on a tale of two letters.
6. Danny Kawczynski on the case for first past the post.
6 comments:
I heard this interview and thought well done Adam, all the labour party do is repeat the same word for word spin time after time, once again Adam, well done.
I agree with Chris Dillow with respect to the European elections.
This week I have tramped about my constituency delivering Conservative leaflets for the Euro elections. Today I have spent three hours telling outside poll stations and four hours delivering further leaflets to get out the vote.
But I didn't vote for any Euro candidiate, nor have I in the past. Though I have voted to select candidates to stand.
The reason I don't vote in the Euro elections is that I'm unconvinced of their UK constitutional legitimacy. To participate in the election by voting would be to submit my agreement to their legitimacy. And I just can't do that.
Other people have other ways of expressing disatisfaction with the EU and its parliament - by voting UKIP or for eurosceptic Tories. I don't object, it's their choice. I make my protest my own way. My conscience is personal and it won't allow me to participate in the Euro election. Even, I'm afraid, if it makes you sick, Iain.
"...explains why he's not getting off his fat arse to do what people died so that he could. Vote. Makes me sick."
No-one died so that people could vote for a party that refuses to talk about the issues affected by these elections, to choose an unknown person, to send to a foreign city, to make deals with foreign politicians, to arrange electoral arrangments to responding to laws proposed by a foreign governmental body.
People died for many reasons, but pre-eminently, they didn't want to be ruled over by foreign powers. If they just wanted to vote, regardless of who or what for, they could have accepted Hitler on condition that he allowed us to vote for some sort of representation in the New German Empire.
I think he makes a fair argument, and I sympathise with bits of it, although I voted (voted to leave the EU and make us a country free to live by our own laws, once again).
Furthermore Iain, I don't appreciate your point that voting in European elections was what British people died for in the World Wars. The opposite makes a more convincing case.
I respect and am hugely grateful to people who died in order to win liberty, and those who died (and far more importantly killed) in order to preserve our freedoms.
However, you may have noticed that in the last sixty-five years the greatest threat to our liberty has come from the policies enacted by democratically elected governments. People who fetishise this tyranny of the majority that "make me sick". Freely choosing not to vote is just as valid a choice as freely choosing to vote.
People die for all kinds of causes, not all of them good (The Tamil Tigers or Wehrmacht in WW2 spring to mind). Making this a criterion for worthiness is asking for trouble, and in any case applying this "Eat your greens, there are people starving in Africa"-cliche of politics to the euro elections is completely laughable.
One could be forgiven for assuming that your new career plan is to end up as editor of the Sun. Which, come to think of it is both more honorable, morally and socually acceptable not to mention considerably more lucrative than becoming an MP.
Simplistic, moralistic judgments without any attempt for explanation or nuance is not the way forward. You used to do so much better.
People died Iain so that we have the choice.
You know, freedom.
What makes me sick is people like you who use the death of former generations to demand that people vote for parties they don't beleive in.
I am more shocked that Guido isn't on your little list though, has there been a little falling out. I look forward to the incessant plugging making a comeback.
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